The lede from today’s Youngstown News:
Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted continued to block county boards from setting hours for early in-person voting in the final days before the November general election, days after a federal judge ordered him to instruct elections officials to do so.
In 2008, President Obama took a big swing through Florida, starting 18 days before Election Day. I describe this in a forthcoming book chapter as the first get out the early vote rally in 2008.
It looks like the campaign is starting even early this year. At a recent appearance in Iowa, Obama urged his supporters to start casting their ballots on Sept. 27, the first day you can vote “absentee in person” in the Hawkeye State.
I haven’t read this paper yet, and I’m not going to be in NOLA due to Isaac, so I’ll let Dan Smith write for himself: Continue reading
A number of losing candidates in South Florida have raised accusations of absentee ballot fraud as the reason they lost the race.
Paul Crespo, candidate in District 105, has asked the state attorney to investigate what he claims are “irregularities” in the absentee voting process during the August 14 primary.
The losing candidate for property appraiser in Miami-Dade, incumbent Pedro Garcia, is also raising charges of fraud.
It’s absolutely critical that elections be run fairly and honestly, and that charges of fraud be investigated fully. But it’s also regrettable that unsubstantiated claims of vote fraud have become part of the standard litany in American politics, undermining citizen confidence in the system.
Why am I skeptical about the cases above?
I applaud Secy of State John Husted’s decision in Ohio to set uniform times for early voting throughout the state of Ohio.
I disagree with the legislature’s decision to eliminate weekend early voting, which is utilized by many citizens who have less flexibility during the week. Also, as shown by the National Conference of State Legislature’s absentee and early voting page and reflected in our early voting calendar, 11 early voting states are able to end early voting the Monday before election day, and 5 more end on the Saturday before. 12 states require at least one Saturday or Sunday opening and in other states, counties are given the flexibility to open on the weekends (we have no data on how many actually choose to do so).
Data that we have reported previously at EVIC shows that the number of early voters climbs day by day as election day approaches, most often peaking on the last day or two (typically the weekend before). I recognize the challenges of preparing for election day when early voting has ended only a day or two before, as well as the budgetary constraints faced by many jurisdictions. (This latter, however, should be offset by election day savings when 20-40% of votes have already been cast.)
Nonetheless, Secretary Husted, by all reports, took into due consideration the opinions of local election officials, the legislature, and competing political forces. He threaded the needle superbly, and has rendered a fair and non-partisan decision.
He should be applauded for doing so, and setting a standard for expert, non-partisan election administration.
Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine School of Law has agreed to be the Reed College Parent/Family speaker for 2012.
Rick is one of the nation’s leading legal experts in election law, including campaign finance, voting technology, and voting rights. His new book, The Voting Wars, has already garnered a lot of press coverage. Rick is known to many through the Election Law blog, a daily update of election law news and commentary.
To top it off, Rick is a dear friend, and is unfailingly warm and collegial. This should be a fun and provocative event.
(Crossposted to Earlyvoting.net)
At last, we have completed our early voting calendar for the 2012 general election. We have early and absentee voting information on all 50 states (including DC). If you would prefer to see the early voting information in spreadsheet format, here is a link to our working file.
A few notes on the calendar. First, all the information was confirmed by contacting the individual Secretary of State Offices. Second, there are at the moment still a few glitches when trying to save a PDF or print a copy of the calendar on a Mac computer, but that should be sorted out soon. Finally, any questions regarding the information on the calendar can be addressed through comments on the blog or by contacting EVIC via email.
We’d like to thank James Hicks for designing and programming the calendar for EVIC.
______ UPDATE:
It became clear yesterday that the early voting information spreadsheet was a useful tool for many to use along with the early voting calendar. Thus, we wanted to clean the spreadsheet up a bit more, to make sure it is clear to all interested parties. The old spreadsheet had internal notes from previous years that are unrelated to the current information.
The cleaner spreadsheet can be found here. Once again, the early voting calendar can be found here.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions about the content.
I have been reading the decision in State of Texas vs. Holder. I am no election lawyer, but Texas’s position at one point sounds a lot like it is trying to get the Supreme Court to rule Section 5 unconstitional. Continue reading →